News tagged with geoengineering

When the National Academy of Sciences released a pair of reports earlier this month on geoengineering—deliberate intervention in the climate system to counter global warming—it moved discussion of the controversial topi ...

US scientists and legal experts are calling for a strong, international authority to regulate any man-made interventions meant to combat global warming, amid fears that the technology could be harmful to ...

Geoengineering, an emerging technology aimed at counteracting the effects of human-caused climate change, also has the potential to counteract political polarization over global warming, according to a new study.

A vast majority of scientists believe that the Earth is warming at an unprecedented rate and that human activity is almost certainly the dominant cause. But on the topics of response and mitigation, there ...

Climate geoengineering uses technology to temporarily reduce the effects of climate change by reflecting a small portion of sunlight back to space. As recently reported in Environmental Research Letters, an int ...

"I think one can argue that if we were to follow a strong nuclear energy pathway—as well as doing everything else that we can—then we can solve the climate problem without doing geoengineering." So says Tom Wigley, one ...

Hacking the Earth's climate to counteract global warming – a subject that elicits strong reactions from both sides – is the topic of a December special issue of the journal Climatic Change. A dozen research papers ...

Reducing the amount of sunlight reaching the planet's surface by geoengineering may not undo climate change after all. Two German researchers used a simple energy balance analysis to explain how the Earth's ...

Although a significant build-up in greenhouse gases in the atmosphere would alter worldwide precipitation patterns, a widely discussed technological approach to reduce future global warming would also interfere ...

Solar geoengineering is a proposed approach to reduce the effects of climate change due to greenhouse gasses by deflecting some of the sun's incoming radiation. This type of proposed solution carries with it a number of uncertainties, ...

(Phys.org)—The benefits and side effects of dissolving particles in our ocean's surfaces to increase the marine uptake of carbon dioxide (CO2), and therefore reduce the excess amount of it in the atmosphere, have been analysed ...

Geoengineering

The modern concept of geoengineering (or climate engineering) describes deliberately manipulating the Earth's climate to counteract the effects of global warming from greenhouse gas emissions. Other uses of the word sometimes occur.

The National Academy of Sciences defined geoengineering as "options that would involve large-scale engineering of our environment in order to combat or counteract the effects of changes in atmospheric chemistry." The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change concluded in 2007 that geoengineering options, such as ocean fertilization to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, remained largely unproven. It was judged that reliable cost estimates for geoengineering had not yet been published.

Geoengineering accompanies mitigation and adaptation to form a three-stranded 'MAG' approach to tackling global warming, notably advocated by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. Some geoengineering techniques are based on carbon dioxide removal. These techniques seek to reduce greenhouse gases in the atmosphere directly. These include direct methods (e.g. carbon dioxide air capture) and indirect methods (e.g. ocean iron fertilization). These techniques can be regarded as mitigation of global warming.

Alternatively, solar radiation management techniques do not reduce greenhouse gas concentrations, and can only address the warming effects of carbon dioxide and other gases; they cannot address problems such as ocean acidification, which are expected as a result of rising carbon dioxide levels. Examples of proposed solar radiation management techniques include the production of stratospheric sulfur aerosols, which was suggested by Paul Crutzen, space mirrors, and cloud reflectivity enhancement. Most techniques have at least some side effects.

To date, no large-scale geoengineering projects have been undertaken. Some limited tree planting and cool roof projects are already underway, and ocean iron fertilization is at an advanced stage of research, with small-scale research trials and global modelling having been completed. Field research into sulfur aerosols has also started. Some commentators have suggested that consideration of geoengineering presents a moral hazard because it threatens to reduce the political and popular pressure for emissions reduction. Scientists do not typically suggest geoengineering as an alternative to emissions control, but rather an accompanying strategy. Reviews of geoengineering techniques have emphasised that they are not substitutes for emission controls and have identified potentially stronger and weaker schemes.